This program is typically meant to guard against prying eyes when downloading anything through p2p (peer to peer) services (especially torrent services). Torrents have gained popularity as a relatively simple replacement to the old methods of file sharing… like the infamous Napster (now there’s a word I haven’t typed in years), gnutella, limewire, bearshare… and many many more. If you want to know more about torrents, then Google is your best friend.

PeerBlock is a program that allows you to block “known bad IP addresses.” Basically this software will block IP addresses from known spyware, government, advertising, education, and harmful p2p connections. This program will help to ensure that these addresses cannot connect with you. However, don’t be confused, the program does not stop others from seeing your IP address… let’s say… on a torrent tracker, but it does protect you from others on the tracker from seeing what you are downloading. Therefore, although people know you are using the tracker for something or some reason, it disallows the bad IP addresses from connecting to what you are downloading/uploading.

Another great aspect of the PeerBlock, is that it stays up to date using multiple IP lists which it compiles and adds to you list of known bad IPs. I recommend to update the list daily.

I hope to write a “Torrent Basics” soon… stay tuned.

Another interesting feature of PeerBlock is that you can enable HTTP blocking as well. This is similar to the Ad Block extensions that are available to Google Chrome users and Firefox users. It effectively blocks 90% or so of the “crap” ads you don’t want to see.

PeerBlock was based on Peer Guardian which ultimately does the same thing. The reason I recommend PeerBlock is because they specifically support ALL of the newest Windows versions – specifically Vista and 7 while Peer Guardian does not.